Hammurabi's Babylon
During the Guti invasion and subsequent rule of 60 years, the city of Lagash retained its independence, but in the third millennium BCE the city of Ur reasserted its power and Lagash became a dependency of the much stronger Ur. Under the Third Dynasty of Ur, lower and central Mesopotamia were once again united. The union lasted just over a century until its last king fell to foreign invaders. After the dissolution of the Third Dynasty, the city-states of Mesopotamia returned to their traditional political pattern of independent city-states, co-existing peacefully side-by-side until Hammurabi emerged circa 1760 BC to reestablish a united kingdom extending from the Persian Gulf to the Habur River which he ruled from his city of Babylon.
Hammurabi tackled the formidable task of codifying the confusing, unwritten and often conflicting laws of the various city states into one, unified body of laws. Thought to be Sumerian in origin, but with the harshness of the Babylonian belief system, the laws are famous for demanding punishment to fit the crime, different treatment for various social classes and inclusion of the rights of women. The preceding sets of laws have disappeared, but we have found several traces of them, and Hammurabi's own code clearly implies their existence. The Code of Hammurabi, as it has come to be known, is composed of 282 laws covering everything from murder to how much to pay to hire an ox for a day and contains an epilogue in which the king declares that he has created the laws by the will of the mighty sun-god Shamash. The irregularly surfaced black basalt stele on which we have found the written Code is 7 feet 5 inches tall and depicts an exchange between Shamash and Hammurabi that humanizes the deity, yet makes clear that the man, though he is a mighty king, remains a servant of the god. This is a different interpretation of deities and men from the Akkadian empire in which the kings came to think of themselves as gods and the gods were removed, supernatural and inhuman.
Above the inscription of the Code, a relief sculpture shows the sun god Shamash enthroned atop a mountain, which is indicated by a scale pattern drawn beneath his feet. Because the subject matter necessitates the depiction of both man and god in the same relief, the mountain is meant to show that the god is literally and figuratively higher than the man who stands on the ground. Shamash’s solar nature is attested to by the stylized flames that shoot from both of his shoulders. In his outstretched hand, he offers to Hammurabi the symbols of divine power, the ring and the staff. The staff signifies that Hammurabi is to be the shepherd of his people and the king asserts his position and suitability to rule in the epilogue to his Code by stating, “The great gods have called me, I am the salvation-bearing shepherd, whose staff is straight.” Standing before Shamash, in a pose of reverent attention, Hammurabi is rendered as tall as the god, an attitude that would seem to give him equality, but he while he is depicted equally vertically his image is significantly thinner than that of the god. He occupies only one-third of the horizontal space of the relief. This is yet another of the artist’s methods to visually impress upon the viewer the importance of the god over the mortal.
During his rule, Hammurabi proved to be an active and capable administrator with practical ideals and a military prowess that was able to hold together the united city-states against surges of attack from both foreign invaders and internal coups from some of the more important cities of the empire. Archeologists have discovered that his city streets were laid out in grids, straight lines that intersected each other at approximately right angles. While this is an innovation that bears witness to city planning and a strong central government with the funds to conduct such improvements, it is also an extremely practical plan that allowed for easy navigation and direct routes. The city plan of Hammurabi is still evident in many American cities, most notably Philadelphia and New York City. To connect his far-flung empire, Hammurabi extended streets past the city limits and built a network of roads that aided travel and trade and instituted a postal system that improved and quickened communication. Hammurabi gave his personal attention to such details as the cleaning of irrigation canals and the insertion of an extra month into the calendar. He was also an inspiring religious leader; during his reign the Babylonian city god Marduk became a recognized leader in the pantheon of deities. Hammurabi was succeeded by his son Samsu-iluna who continued to help Babylonian culture reach the zenith of its cultural development and political power.
The Old Babylonian Empire was brought to an end during the reign of Samsu-iluna when the Hittites invaded and sacked Babylon around 1595 BCE. The Hittites soon retired to their strongly fortified capital of Hattusas, Anatolia near the modern village of Boghazkoy, Turkey. Guarding the massive stone gate of their capital is an excellent example of art unique and original to the Hittites. The two lions, both standing 7 feet tall that flanked the entrance to Hattusas are rendered in solid stone and are brutal and blunt in aspect. The lions are not free standing, they are a part of the gate and their torsos, heads and front legs seem to emerge directly from the cyclopean stones that form the archway of the gate and extend to the towers that flank the entrance. The inspiration for the guardian beast might be Syrian, Egyptian or Mesopotamian, but the integration with the architecture is a Hittite twist.
With the withdrawal of the Hittites, Babylon was left open to the Kassites, a band of marauding mountaineers. Samsu-iluna initially succeeded in beating back the Kassites, but was further weakened when Iluma-ilum, a rebel leader founded a dynasty of his own in the southern Babylonian district bordering the Persian Gulf. Over the next few centuries, the once-great empire of Old Babylon would continue to be attacked, infiltrated and weakened by various opportunistic enemies.
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